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Was Peter Parker sexually abused as a young boy? If your answer is a categorical ‘No’ then you haven’t read this one-shot. Certainly, it’s easy to imagine Spider-Man quarreling with the Green Goblin or Doctor Octopus on a daily basis, but it would be hard to visualize him defending himself against sexual offenders.

In 1984 Marvel Comics produced a free comic book in cooperation with the National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse. There are two short stories in this comic, the first one titled “Secrets” featured Marvel’s most popular web-slinger, and it starts with a frightened young boy. When Spider-Man asks him what is going on, the kid is afraid to tell him, but eventually shares with him a shocking reveal: his babysitter had tried to undress him and touch him inappropriately.

Immediately Spider-Man remembers a rather unpleasant experience. It all begins in his early teens... as we all know, Peter Parker was always a nerdy, shy and friendless youngster, but a couple of years before he turned into the amazing Spider-Man he was befriended by a slightly older boy named Skip. Tired of being bullied in the school, Peter soon grows fond of Skip, who treats him kindly and amiably, or at least that’s what it seems at first.

One afternoon, Skip decides to take young Parker’s mind off science for a change, and he shows him a porno-graphic magazine saying maliciously “Bet you’ve never seen pictures like those in a stuffy text-book!”. Confronted for the first time in his life with porno-graphy, Peter doesn’t know how to react, and as the two boys sit together in the couch, Skip acts even more aggressively: “Let’s conduct a little experiment of our own! Let’s see if we can touch each other like the people in that magazine!”.

Writers Nancy Allen and Jim Salicrup don’t use thought bubbles, so we can’t really know what Peter Parker is thinking, but we can imagine how traumatic it can be that his one and only friend is demanding sexual favors. Common sense would dictate that even without his powers, Peter would simply leave the room “But the boy was too frightened to leave…”.

Once the flashback is done, Spider-Man tells the young boy he is talking with that he was also a victim of sexual abuse, and he emphasizes the importance of talking about what has happened. Keeping secrets is never good, and so this boy finds the courage to talk about it with his parents. In the final page, Spider-Man admits that having repressed this memory for years has been eating away at him, but now, thanks to this encounter, just like in a psychoanalytic countertransference, he has finally faced the horror of the past and come to terms with it.

Surely, the outcome of this story might be a bit too upbeat especially since child moles-tation is a delicate subject, but the thing is that Jim Salicrup did every-thing he could to transmit a clear message: no one has the right to touch your body in a way that makes you feel uncom-fortable and if something like that happens you have the right to talk about it without feeling guilty. As it turns out, many victims of sexual abuse often feel guilty or ashamed about what happened and that’s why they never accuse their aggressors.

“Runaway”, the second story (scripted by Louise Simonson) revolves around Power Pack, a group of kids that help one of their friends who is being sexually assaulted by her own father. In this case, the situation is even more complicated, as the girl tells her mother what is happening and the woman refuses to believe such an awful thing could happen in her home. The conclusion of Simonson’s story is very similar to the previous one: talk about your experience with your parents, if they don’t believe you, talk about it with other adults until you find someone who does. June Brigman and Bob Wiacek are in charge of the art of “Runaway” while Jim Mooney and Mike Esposito penciled and inked “Secrets”, the cover was done by renowned artist John Byrne.

A few months ago, Jim Salicrup was interviewed in Bleeding Cool. Since this comic book was free, there were hundreds of thousands of copies that were given to children. And what do you think it happened after so many children read “Spider-Man and Power Pack Giveaway”? Personally, I would have thought that just like it happens with anti-tobacco campaigns, this initiative would prove quite futile. And I would have been wrong to think that. As Jim affirms “I had been sent copies of newspaper articles reporting on arrests and such that were made as a direct result of children reporting abuse after reading the comic”. So in other words, this actually worked. Nonetheless, Jim also confirms that “What matters is that the comic was published by Marvel in the first place. Even if they might be embarrassed by it now”.

Indeed, 28 years after the release of “Spider-Man and Power Pack Giveaway”, Marvel has eliminated this story from a recent ‘social issues’ anthology; back in the day, Marvel used to collaborate with the National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse and other similar institutions; they are now reprinting stories about drug abuse and other topics but deliberately avoiding the subject of sexual abuse. Has this turned into a dangerous taboo in recent years? Or is it that since Disney owns Marvel now, they’d like to presume that if you don’t talk about sexual molestation then it’s easier to pretend no such thing exists? The truth is that a victim of sexual abuse usually represses the painful memories, and feels ashamed of what has happened. And ironically, when Marvel chose not to reprint this story they failed at burying the truth, because in the end, their silence becomes more eloquent than anything else. So coming back to the initial question, ‘Was Peter Parker sexually abused as a young boy?’ the answer should be a resounding ‘Yes’. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________